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The fan was loose.
Whether it had always been that way or whether someone had jimmied it out with tools, the fan itself was only wedged into the circular cutout, and now, as I inserted my nails beneath the plastic surround, it came out easily.
From there, it was the work of seconds to stick my arm through the hole, down to the bathroom window latch, turn it, and lower the top sash with a squeak of damp wood.
I was in. And unless I was sorely mistaken about that crack, this was likely the way Gabe’s killer had entered the house, breaking the fan as they did.
The thought made me feel a momentary wash of sickness—whoever had slit Gabe’s throat, I was almost certainly standing in their footsteps, my feet resting where theirs had, less than forty-eight hours ago. The last person to touch that fan, this window latch, the last person to drop the sash and slide their way quietly through the narrow opening just as I was now doing—that was the person who had killed Gabe.
For a second, as I lowered myself to the bathroom floor, I thought I might throw up. It wasn’t just the realization that I was following the same route as my husband’s killer, it was everything—the nauseating mix of the familiarity of home, and the terrible alienness of what was happening. The bathroom was still full of my clutter, makeup spilling out of containers, nail varnish leaking onto the shelf of the mirrored cabinet. Gabe’s beard wax was sitting by the sink, and the sight of it brought a lump to my throat. But there was fingerprint dust on the door handle, and when I stepped out into the hallway, plastic duck boards had been laid across the floor to preserve the blood spatter and footprints. In the air was an alien tang of chemicals—presumably from the wipes and sprays they’d used to process the scene. Most of all, most sickeningly of all, I could still smell Gabe’s blood, that metallic butcher shop reek that had assaulted me the moment I opened the front door just a couple of nights ago.
Suddenly, I was not sure if I could do this. I stood for a long moment, holding on to the banister, fighting the panic that was threatening to overwhelm me. Gabe’s absence had never felt so huge and so real as it did now. He was gone. I had spent every waking moment since his death trying to understand that simple fact, trying to believe it, but now, here, surrounded by our shared belongings, the knowledge crashed over me like a wave, one too big to fight. I found I had sunk to my knees, still holding the banister, and a moan was coming from my mouth. It was Gabe’s name.
I wanted him so much. In that moment I would have given anything—anything—to hear his key in the lock, his voice calling up the hallway, Babe, I’m home.
I shut my eyes. Babe, you got this.
I didn’t have this. I didn’t have this at all. I couldn’t do it.
Except I had to. Because no one else was going to.
Dragging myself upright, I took a long, shuddering breath and forced myself down the hallway, to the room that functioned as our spare room and my office, trying to focus on what I needed to do and get out.
In here it was easier to ignore the police presence. They had clearly been through the room in a cursory fashion: my laptop was missing, and so were some of our files, but otherwise it was largely undisturbed. I mentally crossed my fingers as I made my way over to the built-in wardrobe in the corner. If what I wanted was gone, then this whole trip was for nothing, and I had just wasted an hour of precious time.
I knew exactly where it should be—at the bottom of the wardrobe, half-hidden behind a pile of suitcases, a box of Christmas decorations, and a collapsible laundry rack. The junk was still there when I opened the door, and I lifted it out, stacking it piece by piece behind the door, and breathed a sigh of relief. There it was: an unassuming little forty-liter rucksack, one half of an identical pair. My go bag.
Gabe had had one for years, ever since he started working in online security. It wasn’t uncommon for him to get a panicked “we’ve got an urgent situation” call from a client, and to have to jump in the car to spend an unspecified number of days and nights combing through server logs. His was full of computer equipment, diagnostic tools, spare leads, and cables—plus a spare pair of underpants and a vacuum-packed tub of his favorite coffee.
Short-notice calls for physical pen testers were less common, and before I met Gabe it had never occurred to me to have a go bag myself. But he had nagged me into it on the basis that “you never know,” and now I was more thankful than I could say.
I unclipped the top and took a quick look inside, checking that everything was still there, but it seemed to be completely untouched. I guessed that the police had focused all their efforts so far on the actual crime scene and hadn’t given the rest of the house more than a cursory once-over for anything obvious. After all, there would be more than enough time to comb through looking for weapons and drugs once the scene downstairs was processed.
I made a quick, rough inventory of what I knew was in there: spare laptop and charger, mobile phone charger, and a couple of changes of clothing—mostly the kind of comfortable dark stuff I typically wore on jobs. I also had a bunch of tools and equipment that the police would certainly have confiscated if they had found them, including lockpicks; various shims; a sheaf of fake credentials and badges for companies like Intel, Hewlett Packard, and various office-cleaning firms; and a device for cloning security passes. There were also some more practical bits and pieces reflecting the long days and late nights that jobs often entailed—snacks and energy bars, painkillers, water, and a wash bag containing the basics for a bathroom refresh.
Finally, there was a credit card which was probably useless to me now, and at one point there had been £100 in cash. Unfortunately, at some point Gabe or I had clearly raided it for taxi money, since the notes were no longer there.
There wasn’t much I could do about the cash, aside from cursing my former self; the only question was what else, if anything, I needed. I tried to think. I didn’t want to add too much weight or bulk—as it was, the bag was just about small enough to pass as a commuter’s backpack, which meant I could blend in on the Tube or in an office. Strapping on a tent would make me stand out, as well as making the whole thing more tiring to carry. But there was enough space at the top to add some essentials. I had a pair of fake glasses in there already—along with an arm brace and sling that had got me out of a number of sticky situations in the past. It was amazing how helpful people were to a woman with her arm in a sling—holding open security doors, entering pins on keypads, that kind of thing. But I probably needed warmer clothing. The kit had been put together on the basis of passing unnoticed in an office, not going on the run.
There was a basket of clean washing on the landing, waiting to be put away, and I grabbed a few pairs of socks, some warm tops, and extra underwear, as well as a fleece hoodie that could double as a pillow or—in an emergency—a fake baby bump.
What else—my passport? But no, that was pointless. By the time I got to a port, my name would be on a watch list, and besides—I needed to be here. My single aim was to figure out what had really happened to Gabe, and I couldn’t do that from the Cayman Islands, even if I were able to get there.
I was about to pack up and leave when an idea occurred to me: Gabe’s private key—the code that gave access to his Bitcoin wallet. He had told me once where it was, and now I couldn’t remember. It was written down in the back of a book, I knew that, I just couldn’t recall which one. Shit. Shit. Why hadn’t I made more of an effort to commit it to memory? I shut my eyes, trying to remember. He had said it like it was funny, that much I recalled. Like a joke. Where would you hide a key?
Most of our books were downstairs, in the living room, and I couldn’t face going down there, not yet at least. I told myself it was because I was worried the police officer stationed outside might notice someone moving about behind the thin curtains, but in truth, it wasn’t that—or not completely. The truth was that I wasn’t ready to go back down to where Gabe had died.
There were a couple of bookcases in our bedroom, and I decided to try there first. If I didn’t turn anything up, then I could decide whether to risk the living room.
Our bedroom was somehow harder to enter than the spare room. It just looked so normal. There were my clothes, strewn carelessly over the little antique sofa at the foot of our bed. Gabe’s jeans, neatly folded over the radiator. His book was still splayed on the bedside table, along with a handful of change. Even the duvet was still rumpled the way we had left it the morning before the Arden Alliance pen test. How long ago was that? I counted back. One… two… that would be three nights ago, the last time I had slept in my own bed, with Gabe’s body pressed against mine. It felt like another lifetime—like a different person had lain there with him, one who wasn’t rubbed raw with grief and ambushed by unwanted memories every few minutes. If only. If only I had stayed there with him, his warm body wrapped around mine. If only I had told him I didn’t feel well. If only I’d known. But I didn’t. I couldn’t have. And if I had—if I’d stayed home, curled up on the couch, watching TV instead of sneaking around in Arden Alliance’s server room, then maybe none of this would have happened. Or perhaps I would be dead too. Would that really be so bad?
I knew that I should get what I needed and get out, but I couldn’t stop myself from walking slowly across the room to Gabe’s side of the bed and crawling into the space his body had left. I lay down and pressed my face into his side of the pillow, and it smelled of him. It smelled of Gabe.
I felt the tears threatening at the back of my throat, and I knew in my heart that what I was doing was dangerous. I was going to lose it, and the police were going to find me there, hours later, still hugging Gabe’s pillow, having sobbed myself into catatonia. But God, I didn’t want to leave. If I could just stay curled up a few minutes longer, my eyes closed, pretending that everything was okay, that Gabe was just downstairs making coffee, that any minute he would be coming up, cups balanced in his hands as he tried to open the bedroom door with his elbow…
I felt an animal howl of grief rise up inside me, but I pushed it back down and forced myself to sit up, swing my legs over the side of the bed, and take a deep, shuddering breath.
You got this.
